If you attend Mass in the crypt of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at the University of Notre Dame, you may be startled to notice, as you walk up to take communion, that your steps take you directly over the final resting place of Orestes A. Brownson (1803–1876). The fact that Notre Dame makes . . . . Continue Reading »
Economics, as a social science, occupies a peculiar space within academic and national life. Economists deal with acting, choosing human persons,and their behavior in the most fickle area of life, the commercial marketplace; yet economists employ mathematical devices drawn from physics and the hard . . . . Continue Reading »
Night falling early: silver in the duff, frosty small change, and in our maple, crows, calculating and tentative. But I don’t grudge darkness; I did back in my rough and greedy youth spent wanting—deep in those never-long-enough days I clung to—sky whose blue coffers I prayed would . . . . Continue Reading »
Part I: Paul J. Griffiths Proselytism is a topic enjoying renewed attention in recent years. This is largely because it is increasingly obvious that religious commitments and conflicts are and will remain central to the reconfiguration of global politics that began in 1989. Understanding the . . . . Continue Reading »
Thanksgiving was always tense while I was growing up, and I don’t know why. Christmas, now—Christmas was mostly fun and presents and carols and laughter, as I remember. But Thanksgiving was arguments and huffs and recriminations and doors slamming and one indistinguishable great-uncle or . . . . Continue Reading »
Throughout the twentieth century, leaders of the Catholic Church implored lay men and women with increasing urgency to be more active as Catholics in society, and—since Vatican II—to become more involved in the internal affairs of the Church. The earlier call found a warm response among . . . . Continue Reading »
In the middle of the fall semester, I find myself thinking back to the end of another school year, for it was the time that changed my teaching for good—and, I believe, for the better. It was May, and I was driving across the Midwest on my annual pilgrimage to the International Congress of . . . . Continue Reading »
I’m a new man. I’ve just slept through the night for the first time in weeks because my newborn son has just slept through the night for the first time in his young life. Don’t get me wrong: most nights, he still cries for a feeding at 1:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. But last Monday he terrified his . . . . Continue Reading »
It is a telling—and alarming—sign that following September 11, 2001 the two failed terror attacks involved people who were drawn to Islam while serving time in prisons. Jose Padilla, now known as Abdullah al-Muhajir, the man accused of plotting to build a “dirty bomb,” had been in . . . . Continue Reading »
Beginning in the thirteenth century, the three monotheistic religions parted ways, with the Jewish and Christian world going in one direction and the Islamic world going in another. We are still coming to terms with that split. But the three faiths still hold more in common than we typically . . . . Continue Reading »
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